


Hard to Extinguish

by thesnadger



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: A Frankly Unreasonable Number Of Fire Metaphors, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Emotions, Gen, I'm SAD about AGNES, Supernatural Empathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-04
Updated: 2019-12-04
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:15:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21665782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesnadger/pseuds/thesnadger
Summary: Gertrude and Agnes are connected metaphysically, and there are bound to be some side effects. Perhaps moments of subtle emotional feedback? Glimpses of a life entirely unlike one's own.
Relationships: Agnes Montague & Gertrude Robinson
Comments: 7
Kudos: 57





	Hard to Extinguish

_Truth be told, I don’t know what you actually_ did _do; neither Arthur nor Diego would explain it to me in detail, and Jude simply flies into a rage when it’s brought up._

It was a binding, she knows that much. Why the Mother of Puppets would want her linked to Agnes Montague, Gertrude can’t imagine. It may be that the Web’s aim is the same as hers: stopping the ritual from succeeding. But she very much doubts that. She knows not to be optimistic when dealing with the dread powers. Far more likely that the connection is only one step in some dreadful, convoluted plot.

Still, she doubts there is any merit in trying to understand the Web’s machinations. That line of thinking only to leads to a paranoia that ultimately feeds it. And perhaps there is no greater ‘plan.’ Perhaps the Web simply pulls and guides and manipulates for the sake of it, just as the Slaughter rends and the Desolation destroys and the Eye watches.

She only wishes she knew what exactly she invited into herself that day. Whether binding herself to an avatar of the Desolation will have side effects that Gertrude can’t predict.

* * *

She’s in the Archive today, following a potential lead regarding the Church of the Divine Host. Attempting to, at any rate. There’s a new archival assistant there, so new he still thinks this is an ordinary job. He’s clearly hoping to prove himself as an enthusiastic worker by pestering her with questions and suggestions every few minutes. She hints rather blatantly that he _probably_ has work he ought to be doing someplace other than her office. But he remains oblivious to her irritation. He’s wasting her time, and _her_ time is absolutely invaluable.

It’s as the last thought enters her mind that a sudden, white-hot rage rises in her. Before she realizes what she’s doing, she’s wrapped her hand around a letter opener and she’s holding it out, shouting at the man. Growling in a way that doesn’t suit her at all and describing in specific detail exactly what she'll do to him if he doesn't quiet his babbling and get far, _far_ away from her _this instant._

He backs out of the room quickly, propelled by a mixture of confusion and animal fear. Until today he’d no doubt seen Gertrude as a reserved, doddering old woman. He won’t know how to respond to the suddenness of her outburst or the downright _unsettling_ knowledge she seems to have of the human nervous system and the various ways to damage it. But he at least has some instinctive sense for danger. He’ll steer clear of her from that day on.

The strange pulse of anger fades after he bolts, and Gertrude is left shaken. Unsettled. Wondering where on earth that all came from.

* * *

Agnes is at her apartment with Jude and a few others, staring out the window into the street. She likes watching the people as they walk by outside. She sits and wonders about them, about the places they’re all hurrying towards, what they do with all their days. Whether any of them think about destiny or fate.

Behind her, Eugene is going on about the glory of the Scorched Earth. How everything that stands here now will one day be ash and so on, and so on, and so on. She’s so _bored_ of it all. So tired of hearing the same sermons repeated over and over. She wants him to be quiet so she can think her thoughts about the people outside.

She glances back at them, her family, her caretakers, and her keepers. And something comes over her. Suddenly they all seem . . . ridiculous. Not one of them has a clue how any of this works, but they're all so confident that they're serving a higher purpose. So certain they're powerful, free creatures far above the mass of humanity when they're no less lost than anyone else. It’s ridiculous, it’s absurd _,_ and she can’t help but laugh. But the laugh that comes out of her is an odd one. Her laughter is rare, especially these days, but when she does laugh it’s wild, loud and barking. This is a dry, bitter chuckle--barely audible, but it quiets the room.

With contempt in her voice, Agnes fixes her gaze on Eugene. "Can't you talk about anything else? Your droning is dimming me."

The whole cult freezes, not sure how to react. They've seen her angry. They’re used to that, they _understand_ that. They understand screaming and tears, they understand throwing things and threats made and threats carried out and fire. What they don’t understand is the cool, certain superiority in her as she turns her attention back towards the window.

Eugene isn’t sure whether he’s glad she didn’t burn him. But he quiets down, and Agnes is left with her thoughts again.

Many days later Agnes is alone. She’s in her apartment. Waiting, as she always is, for a future she is meant to bring.

Something creeps into her as she sits. It’s a feeling she’s not able to name because she only knows the word _contentment_ as something to be disrupted. _Satisfaction_ and _accomplishment_ are always setups to the inevitable conclusion, which is _devastation_. She would not think to apply them to this soft, pleasurable wave that settles on her. It’s the feeling of being someone who has survived another day in a hostile world. Someone who goes to their rest knowing that they’ve arranged a small part of that world to their satisfaction.

For just a moment, Agnes doesn’t feel restless. She doesn’t feel a yearning for something she cannot name. She feels . . . at peace.

It passes, and she feels the hiss and pop of tears evaporating as they roll down her face.

* * *

Then one day, Agnes is dead. Gertrude keeps tabs on the cult’s affairs, of course, but in the end it isn’t necessary. She feels it as it is happening.

She’d have expected it to be painful, the binding had certainly been. But when the moment of death arrives Gertrude doesn’t feel anything that she would call pain. Just a sudden absence. A sense of loss and a chill that cannot be eased for days no matter how warm her office is kept or how many sweaters she piles on. She knows what it means. The child born of flame is no more, and another ritual has been prevented.

If Gertrude is unable to feel any pleasure at that thought, it is no doubt because of the binding. She can hardly expect to live through the death of someone she is metaphysically tied to without it affecting her mood, after all.

She’ll get over it. There’s too much to be done for her to sit and mope about.

Time moves on, and so does she. Eugene Vanderstock’s statement fills in the details her assistants in the field had missed. She finds that she’s hardly the worst-off survivor of the affair. That young man, Jack Barnabas . . . Gertrude has a strong stomach, but she feels a twinge somewhere when she sees the photos. The burns, she knows, are only the beginning. For someone as defenseless as him to attract the ire of the Desolation? He would have been far better off if Agnes’s kiss had reduced him to cinders.

Barnabas’s silly, earnest attempt at flirtation stopped a terrible future from coming to pass. And of course, he would never know it. Any more than he’d know why the rest of his days on earth would be filled with misery, torment, and pain. He’d saved the world in ignorance, and he would suffer just as ignorantly. It’s a bit poetic, Gertrude thinks, the tragedy of it all.

She dwells on it as she looks over his file. However little Barnabas understood about the situation, the fact remains that she has him to thank for preventing the Scorched Earth. It seems a shame to let him suffer and die. Besides that, sitting back and watching his fate when she has the ability to intervene feels uncomfortably like what the Beholding would want from her.

Eugene has been taken care of already. She isn’t the type to let someone with a long, long history of murder walk away after threatening to burn her alive. In hindsight, her method of disposal might have been overkill. But then, overkill seems to be the only thing those who attach themselves to the Lightless Flame understand. There can be no doubt that some other representative of them will come banging on her door one day. When they do, perhaps she’ll speak to them directly. And if Jack Barnabas comes up in conversation, well, no harm in making a few extra threats on his behalf. Assuming he’s still alive by that point.

As she makes this decision, she feels a quiet heat rise in her. A feeling of satisfaction tinged with sorrow that is not altogether unpleasant.

* * *

“If I die quietly,” Agnes says, taking in the shocked faces around her. “Without fire, anguish or mourning, my spark might return to the Lightless Flame so that a new chosen one can be born. One that will not falter.”

She speaks softly, without emotion. She isn’t certain what she feels and hasn’t been certain of that for a long time. She only knows what she does _not_ feel. Agnes has never known what she wants. But she is finally sure of what she doesn’t want. Perhaps never wanted at all.

A few of the assembled members are shaking their heads, still not believing it. Some clench their fists and shout and growl. Not in true anger, she knows, but in the desperate rage that flies up when one feels their heart begin to break. When one finally, truly realizes that everything they built and toiled and struggled for is being burned. Something that has been inside Agnes ever since her birth is feeding on their misery even now. She can feel it giving her strength she neither needs or desires.

Jude is, of course, one of the people shouting. Her anger does nothing to hide the agony that surrounds her like a haze. She’s saying something, but Agnes isn’t paying attention. She just looks at Jude. The lines of her face, the edges of the tattoo barely visible on her bare shoulders. She’s wearing the same tank top that she’d worn in the cafe a few months back.

They’d been talking about the future. The Scorched Earth, the Lightless Flame, Agnes’s destiny, it seemed like that all they ever talked about. Jude was frustrated with waiting and believed that the best way to release Agnes from whatever tied her to the Archivist was to go to their institute and burn her out of it. She said that an old woman and a pile of ever-so-flammable records would have no hope against Agnes’s full glory. The Eye would be left an ashen husk, and Agnes would be free to embrace the fate she had been born for.

Agnes had never met the Archivist, of course, and there was something appealing about the idea of confronting her. Though she wasn’t sure whether she wanted to kill her as Jude hoped or just see her, face to face.

Either way, she shook her head. “If I did that . . . .” she said, “I think that something in me would burn up with her.”

Jude hadn’t liked that answer. She’d pressed her palms flat on the table and looked pleadingly at Agnes.

“Maybe it’s something that _needs_ to burn,” she’d said. “Something you’re better off without. Even if it isn’t, surely any loss you suffer can only feed the Lightless Flame.”

A week after that day, Jack had asked for her name.

Agnes had been worshiped and adored, and in many ways loved. She’d felt the heat of a supplicant’s devotion and the burn of a fiery, passionate longing. But Jack was the first person who seemed to want to _know_ her. To know the person she was, instead of the person she was going to be - that destined destroyer whose light was so blinding it kept everyone from seeing _her_. Jack didn’t know her, but he’d wanted to. That had been enough.

Jude is still shouting, and now there are tears. Her words have gone from pleading to recriminating in the face of Agnes’s silence.

“How could you give up on yourself,” she shouts. “After everything we’ve done, all we’ve sacrificed! Do you even realize what losing you will do to me? To us?”

Agnes reaches out, drawing a gentle finger along the side of Jude’s face. A deep groove forms in the melting wax, and Jude is quiet.

“Surely,” Agnes says, her voice cold, “any loss you suffer can only feed the Lightless Flame.”

There are no more protests after that.

* * *

Jude Perry has a scar now that extends from cheek to jaw. Wax is easy to mold, she can be rid of any scar with a moment of concentration if she wishes. She keeps it all the same, and whenever the heat of a burning building or the struggling limbs of a person she’s tying up cause it to lose its shape she is careful to reform it exactly as it was before.

* * *

Jack Barnabas endures three terrible years. Then slowly, eventually, things begin to turn. He finds a job in a warehouse where no one gives his face much thought, at least not after the initial surprise. He begins to make friends again, moves out of his father’s place and finds an apartment of his own. Things are still difficult, but he can see hope on the horizon.

He thinks about her now and then. Wonders if that end had been what she’d wanted or if those people drove her to it, not sure which answer would sadden him more. He has no way of guessing, of course. He knows he never understood anything about her, couldn’t even say what she was or why her touch held such blistering agony. He won’t ever forget her, though.

The scars on his face still ache sometimes. But it’s the one on his hand, the path of a single teardrop, that hurts the most.

* * *

Gertrude Robinson isn’t the mother type. She’d made that very clear, not that Eric had needed reminding. Still, she promised to find his son and has no reason to break that promise. If Gerard is a threat, she’ll deal with him. If not . . . perhaps he can be useful, perhaps not. Either way keeping him close probably isn’t the worst idea given his upbringing.

She is prepared for a threat. What she isn’t prepared for is the young man she eventually finds huddled in the corner of some horrid little dive bar, speaking to no one. Drinking in the mechanical, joyless fashion of someone looking to obliterate their consciousness as quickly as possible. He looks up as she approaches, and she wonders briefly if his connection to the Eye is enough for him to have Seen her coming. Unlikely. She doubts he can see past the edge of his own glass at the moment. Without asking, she sits down across the table from him.

“Well,” she says. “It has certainly been a while, Gerard.”

He looks at her with a little suspicion. Mostly resignation. “Do I know you?”

“Not personally. You could technically say we’ve met, in that I saw you once when you were an infant,” she replies. “But I imagine your mother has spoken of me.”

“Yeah, well. If you’re a friend of mum’s you can fuck off.” Gerard’s expression moves from resignation to dismay the moment Mary is mentioned, and he lowers his head to the table. “Not dealing with more of her stuff today.”

A wry smile moves the corner of Gertrude’s mouth. “‘Friend’ is not the word I would use.”

Gerard sighs heavily. “Look. I’m not in the mood for dancing around the point. If you’re some enemy of hers here to kill or kidnap me to get at her, you’d be better off going after something she actually values. And if you’re one of the ones that likes being creepy on purpose you’re wasting your time. Whatever you’ve got to scare me with, I’ve seen it before.”

Gertrude pauses and considers the young man in front of her. He's half-drunk now, but she doubts he would look better sober. There’s a desperation in him that she’s seen before, usually in people who come in to give statements and then disappear a week later. She doubts he’ll be able to manage much longer unless something changes for him.

Poor man hardly had a chance, really. Raised by someone who could have only seen him as an extension of her will, an heir to mold into the continuation of her legacy. Gertrude isn’t the sentimental type, but she's not unaware, either. She certainly doesn't imagine Mary ever gives much consideration to what Gerard himself is feeling, or if he feels anything at all. Only interested in the person he is going to be, never the person he is.

Her mind briefly wanders to a few years ago. When she’d been shivering under five layers of clothing and for a moment found herself madly, ridiculously wondering whether Agnes Montague had ever dreamed. Were her dreams only of fire, of torturing heat and despair, or were there ever gentle dreams? Dreams of other futures?

It’s a thought Gertrude lets go of quickly. A pointless thing to speculate on even at the time. Agnes is dead, and any dreams she might or might not have had are hardly relevant to the current situation.

“All right,” she says. “To the point, then. How would you like to be rid of your mother?”

* * *

Agnes’s death is cold and quiet. But it does not go completely unheard.


End file.
